Numerical modelling

This chapter deals with the problem of modelling the behaviour of massive concrete structures. In the last decades, the developments in the field of computational mechanics were significant, so nowadays several numerical techniques are available to this goal, depending on the scale level considered but also on which phenomena/processes are taken into account. In this chapter, we limit the description to approaches/models that can be implemented using the Finite Element Method, which is still the worldwide most used numerical technique. This chapter presents two distinct groups of models. The first group covers deterministic models starting from the simplest ones, which consider simply the thermo-chemo-mechanical behaviour of the material, to more sophisticated approaches which consider also the fluid phases; i.e., they consider concrete as a multiphase porous material. In this first part, a specific section is dedicated to mechanical behaviour modelling considering damage of the material, plasticity, etc. The second group of the models takes into consideration stochastic nature of cracking. These models are formulated specifically for giving a detailed information about cracks spacing and opening in concrete structures in service life conditions.